Unsuitable Men (3 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, before he could respond. “That was tacky, with your girlfriend sitting just over there.”

“Not my girlfriend,” he shook his head.

“Really? I thought you didn’t do repeats,” Tracy said. “Riley said you’ve brought her over before.”

Brendan smiled. He had the best smile. His eyes practically disappeared when he smiled. It wasn’t all lips and teeth. His entire face smiled.

“Didn’t know you cared,” he said.

“I wish I didn’t,” she said. Maybe it was all the alcohol, but she seemed unable to censor herself.

“Tracy, I know you,” Brendan said. “Fifty percent of why you care is competition. I don’t recall you blowing up my phone these last few months, even though you knew I was around. So I show up with someone else and all of a sudden, you’ve been thinking about me?”

“I didn’t say I
had
been thinking about you. I said I
am
thinking about you right now.”

“Is anything different?” Brendan asked, suddenly serious.

Tracy swallowed. “Excuse me?” she asked. But she was stalling. She knew precisely what he meant.

“Since the last time we had this conversation. Is anything different? Does the fact that I have a desk job now make a difference? Is that what this is?”

There was an edge to his voice, a tone that suggested he was a little bit angry with her, or at a minimum, frustrated. And why wouldn’t he be?

“I wasn’t thinking about any of that,” she admitted. “I was just thinking about . . . how it was. It was good. Wasn’t it, that night?”

“Yeah. It was,” he said almost resentfully. “Better than good.”

Brendan poured himself another shot and offered her one as well, but Tracy shook her head. When he looked up at her again, there was unmistakable annoyance etched on his face. Tracy turned away
from him and headed back to the circle where everyone else seemed to be preparing to leave. Putting a hand on Riley’s shoulder, she pulled her aside and let her know she probably wouldn’t be driving back.

“No problem,” Riley said. “You know where everything is. Are you going up now?”

“Yeah,” Tracy nodded. “I think between the heat and the wine, I’m done. I’ll help with clean-up in the morning if . . .”

“No, no worries. Go get some sleep.” Riley’s glance shifted momentarily to the bar where Brendan was just tossing back his third shot. She squeezed Tracy’s arm before rejoining her guests.

Upstairs, Tracy took a shower in the guest suite and changed into a t-shirt she’d pilfered from the master bedroom. She could hear the activity downstairs; it sounded like the party was breaking up after all. Turning off all the lights in the suite, she crawled under the covers of the immense bed and hugged one of the pillows. She was tired, but unable to sleep, thinking about Brendan’s words:
fifty percent of why you care is competition
, he’d said.

It was true that she felt competitive toward Meghan, but that wasn’t because she didn’t value him, it was because she did. But that didn’t change the fact that Brendan was the walking, talking epitome of what her mother had always told her could end in her ruin: a good-looking, fast-talking, fast-living, charming rascal; a man who seemed so easy and affable that he reeled you in, stole your heart and eventually, finally left you in shreds because he never had, and never could see you as anything more than a playmate.

Not that Brendan would ever be at all mean about it; in fact, he was probably quite the opposite. He was the guy who would treat women like queens, whispered sweet nothings in their ear, all the while leading them out the front door, never to call again. He hadn’t done that to her because she’d avoided letting it get that far. There had only been the one time. And the only thing that complicated it was that she’d had to go on seeing him after that, and that they were friends. And that he was so damn
sweet
to her.

Tracy shook her head as though hoping to shake out all thoughts of him and turned over, pulling the pillow closer. But he’d looked so good tonight. Smelled so good. And that smile.

Who was he to smi
le at her like that?
Asshole.

It was the
Grammys
. How could anyone avoid getting excited about the Grammys? When Riley mentioned it, Tracy had jumped at the chance. Not because she was a music fan necessarily, but she did enjoy glitz, glamour and any excuse to get dressed to the nines and hang out. The ceremony was only part of it. Shawn and Riley got A-
lister
seats and would be visible during the primetime broadcast, while Tracy sat with Brendan a couple of rows back. She didn’t care. She was within reach of the guys from
OutKast
, and could smell Keri
Hilson’s
perfume from where she sat. All through the show, Brendan had
leaned
in, telling her funny inside stories about some of the performers: like who had terrible B.O. after each performance, who kept vodka in their water bottle as he danced and sang his way his way half-intoxicated through every performance, and who made it a habit of sleeping with her dancers while banning her husband from her tour.

Halfway through the show—which was way longer than one might think if they’d only ever watched it on television—Brendan had leaned back in his seat and stretched his long legs in front of him, resting an arm across the back of Tracy’s chair as he stretched. And suddenly she was hyper-aware of him; his scent, his masculinity, the size of his hand resting on his thigh.

During the second half of the show, it was obvious he was growing restless, as was she. The speeches had all begun to blend one into the other, and soon she didn’t care who won. She couldn’t even have said if Shawn’s category had gone by. Brendan seemed to sense this and without warning, he’d gripped her hand and pulled her up from her seat, leading her out through the back of the auditorium. Outside it had only just begun to get dark and they weren’t the only ones making a break for it. Some of the performers were getting into their cars, waving at fans as they did, probably off to prepare for the much more important post-Grammy parties.

Tracy was surprised how many times Brendan got stopped, how many high-profile artists knew him by name and seemed to want to talk to him. He laughed and joked with them, carried on relaxed conversations and introduced her to everyone. With each person who stopped him, he’d leaned somewhat away from them and in her direction, signaling with his body language that he didn’t have much time to chat, that he was on his way someplace else.

Finally, he’d pulled out his phone and made a call, and moments later, grabbed her hand again, pulling her into a limo—one of a long line of identical vehicles—that eventually made its way to the curb in front of them. Inside, the air was cool, offering welcome relief from the muggy Los Angeles evening, and better yet, there was a bar. Brendan had immediately gone for it, holding up a bottle of chilled champagne for her approval.

“God, yes,” she’d sighed and he laughed out loud.

They’d watched some of the show on television from the cool confines of the limo, eating the snacks and chocolate-covered strawberries from the mini-refrigerator.

“I think I like the Grammys better on TV,” Tracy admitted.

“This is probably the first time in over ten years I’ve watched it on television,” Brendan said.

Tracy looked at him then, noticing for the first time that he looked a little tired. This was his work, she recalled. Not something he did for fun, which made her wonder what he
did
do for fun. So much of their growing friendship had centered on what was happening with Shawn and Riley, she sometimes forgot to think of him as a whole and separate being from his famous best friend and client. Even her anger at Shawn she’d taken out on him on occasion.

“What would Shawn do if he came out of the auditorium and you were gone?” she asked.

Brendan thought about it for a moment. “He would call me. And if I didn’t answer, he’d leave it alone.”

“He wouldn’t be pissed?” Tracy asked.

Brendan laughed. “Nah. He’d be relieved. He’d probably skip out on all the parties—which I would never let him do—and go back to the hotel to spend some quiet time with Riley.”

“So let’s let him do that,” Tracy said.

Brendan opened his mouth to resist her suggestion but after a moment closed it again.

“What would we do instead?” he asked.

But it wasn’t a suggestive question, it was asked as though he had never considered for a moment what he might do with his time if he wasn’t spending it managing Shawn’s career.

“Anything you want,” Tracy said. “But my inclination? I say we go back and change into jeans, sit around eating pizza and watch pay-per-view.”

It wasn’t the evening she had in mind when she planned her trip to the Grammys for sure. And if she stuck to Shawn and Riley there was no telling how many high-profile not-to-be-missed insider parties she would get to go to. But at that moment when she saw the look of boyish exhilaration on Brendan’s face, there was nothing else she could imagine she would rather do than sit in a hotel room with him and eat fattening food while watching bad action movies.

Tracy listened as Shawn and Riley ascended the stairs and heard their tread on the wood floors as they passed her door on the way to the master suite. Then there was the sound of footsteps stopping and turning back. She shut her eyes just in time as Riley opened the door, peeking in to check on her. She didn’t feel like talking and rehashing the evening. Her emotions were all in a jumble and she was preoccupied by the thought of Brendan heading home with his not-girlfriend Meghan.

On nights like this one, it seemed so foolish to stick to these rules she’d made for herself about men, weeding them out, the suitable from the unsuitable. She’d put Brendan firmly in the unsuitable column and had done so a long time ago, so why was she obsessing like this? Because she was alone, for one thing. Riley had seized love with Shawn with both hands, damn the torpedoes, and now look at her.

Despite the bumps along the way, she was better off. And while Tracy wasn’t all-out crazy about Brendan, or even a little in love with him, she liked spending time with him.
Why shouldn’t she just embrace that?
Maybe if she did, she wouldn’t be alone almost every night hugging pillows. Right now, there was no doubt Brendan was hugging a lot more than that. Probably screwing Little Meghan’s brains out. She would be a high-pitched screamer, Tracy was certain. And Brendan knew how to make a girl scream, that was for damn sure . . .

Around one a.m. when Tracy was sure she would never get to sleep, she slipped out of bed and headed down to the kitchen to nibble on leftovers. Riley and Shawn had a pretty elaborate alarm system but Riley told her they never armed the motion sensors inside the house. Shawn had a habit of getting out of bed in the middle of the night and wandering into his studio downstairs just beyond the living room to listen to and mix music. And Riley herself liked to do some writing in her office pretty early as well, so they’d never used the internal alarms for fear of tripping on accidentally.

Tracy sat in the kitchen eating cold steak and salad and poured herself a glass of red wine, knowing that its narcotic effect, along with the full stomach would have her drifting off to sleep in no time once she made her way back to the bedroom, even though she would have to double her work-out tomorrow to make up for the late-night meal. In front of her, on the kitchen counter was a card which she idly opened while taking her last swallow of wine. It was from Meghan, wishing Shawn and Riley “all the happiness and joy in the world” when they welcomed their “little one.” How cute.

As she made her way back up the stairs, Tracy hesitated at the sound of a voice. Wondering whether Shawn and Riley were still up, she paused, standing still for a moment. There it was again, the voice, but not speaking. Not intelligibly anyhow. Tracy rolled her eyes.

Seriously?

It was the sound of her best friend, eight months pregnant but
still
getting some. Were pregnant people that huge supposed to do that? I mean, what could you even
do
with
all that
belly? She gave a shudder and quickly returned to the guest suite and shut the door, climbing back into bed without bothering to brush her teeth again, and putting the pillow over her head, preferring not to fall asleep to the sound of someone else’s clearly satisfying lovemaking.

When she awoke just after six, Tracy fully expected that no one else would be up, but when she got to the kitchen, Shawn was already there, standing shirtless and wearing only boxer briefs at the open refrigerator, drinking directly from a carton of orange juice. Remembering the sounds that emanated from the master suite the previous evening, she considered slipping back out of the kitchen before she was detected, but he turned as she entered. Tracy noted his arresting physique; v-shaped torso, narrow waist and enviable abs. She discreetly averted her eyes and turned to find coffee.

“Hey,” he said. “Forgot you were here.”

Clearly
, Tracy thought.
If the racket you and Riley made last night is any indication.

“Yup. Still here. But I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I get some coffee,” she said, looking through the cabinets.

The coffee was just out of her reach. Shawn came over and reached above her, setting it down on the counter.

“Thanks,” she murmured. “Riley awake?”

“Nope. She sleeps later these days. It’s hard for her to get comfortable at night so she stays up a lot later.”

Tracy began moving about the kitchen, grabbing things for her coffee. It had been awhile since she’d awoken to anything other than solitude. She wouldn’t have minded sitting out on the loggia and having breakfast with someone, making leisurely, comfortable conversation. But Shawn probably wasn’t her best bet for that kind of morning. Over the years they’d had many conversations, and none of them that she recalled could be characterized as “comfortable.”

“She
say
anything to you about when she might take off work?” he asked.

This was as close as Shawn would ever come to enlisting her help with anything. She knew he wanted Riley on bed-rest or at the very least staying home, and she also knew that Riley was resisting. For him to have mentioned it to her was his oblique way of finding out whether she might join his team.

“Yes, she told me she plans to take off when she goes into labor,” Tracy said, her tone flippant.

A muscle at Shawn’s jaw twitched. She couldn’t help it; she still enjoyed goading him. Part of it was a throwback from the days when she was certain he was the worst idea in the world for her best friend, but the other part, the part she rarely acknowledged even to herself, was that it rankled her that he’d never seemed to be in the least bit attracted to her. Not even a little bit. Few men found her as uninteresting as Shawn did.

Shawn seemed to see through her somehow; he got what others didn’t—that beauty didn’t mean anything and the only purpose it served was to mask a multitude of sins. Being so beautiful himself had likely taught him that lesson. The difference between them was that while she was only too willing to exploit her good looks to her advantage, Shawn seemed to find the extra attention tiresome. It satisfied Tracy to remember that it hadn’t always been that way.

There had been a time when they were two of a kind—somewhat selfish, spoiled, and impatient. Tracy had always suspected that he didn’t like her at least partially because she was so important to Riley, and he wanted that position all to himself. The turmoil he had gone through in his marriage and with his career a couple years back had changed him though, and now he was a more mature man, a more patient husband, and to Brendan, a better friend.

According to Riley, he had actually
fired
Brendan as his manager, telling him that he needed to settle some place and get an actual life; an act of selfless friendship that didn’t make one iota of business sense since Brendan was the manager who had ushered him to the highest pinnacle of his career.  So, while Shawn had changed, she remained very much the same. It was unfair of him to judge her, she thought, when he understood perhaps as no one else did, what it was like to be catered to, indulged, deferred to. With him, it was in large measure because of his fame as well as his looks, with her it was entirely because she was beautiful in a way most women wished they were.

“Did she tell you about her last doctor’s appointment?” Shawn asked from behind her as she watched her coffee brew.

Tracy shut her eyes and inhaled the welcome scent of the roasted beans. “Uh uh. Nope.”

“Her blood pressure’s higher than it should be,” Shawn said. He sounded almost accusatory. “And her amniotic fluid levels were low.”

Tracy’s eyes popped open and she turned to face Shawn again, feeling chastened. She assumed he wanted Riley to quit working because of his usual overprotective BS, which sometimes looked an awful lot like control to Tracy. But apparently she was wrong.

Shawn was leaning against the kitchen counter across from her, his arms folded. Tracy could see that there was real worry in his eyes even though he was masking it with irritation.

“Well,” she said quietly. “It’s not as though it’s life-threatening, right? If she agrees to take it easy and maybe cut back on . . .”

“I know you couldn’t possibly be talking about me behind my back,” Riley said. She had clearly just woken up because her hair was pulled back messily and she was wearing only a
thin
tank nightdress that stopped mid-thigh, made shorter by her burgeoning belly.

God, Tracy thought. Her boobs were
huge
. She was pretty sure she wanted kids someday but the bodily changes freaked her out a little. Especially the idea of voluntarily allowing herself to gain weight.

Riley headed in Shawn’s direction and he instinctively, almost absentmindedly opened his arms for her. She pressed her face into his chest, eyes closed, and moaned.

“One cup, baby,” she said. “Just one cup. I’ll be a much better wife to you today if I can just have
one
cup of coffee.”

Tracy turned to grab herself a mug and pour her own cup while Riley conducted her negotiation.

“What do you think caffeine does to high blood pressure?” he
asked,
his voice level.

“Negligible effect,” Riley said. “I Googled it.”

“Funny, because I did too and it said something very different,” Shawn said.

Tracy noted that he managed to look annoyed, but not
at
Riley. How he did that, she would never know. She mixed creamer into her coffee and took a deep swallow.
Perfect
.

For a moment, anticipating the first sip of coffee distracted her from her other mission, but now she refocused.

“So when were you going to tell me about the doctor’s appointment?” Tracy asked casually. “About the fluid levels and all that?”

“I wasn’t aware I had to report back to you about my OB appointments,” Riley said, her voice light. She pulled away from Shawn’s embrace and opened the fridge, taking out the same carton of orange juice he had, and like him, drank directly from it.

Tracy wondered idly whether that was the kitchen etiquette they would teach their kid.

“You don’t. But I think it’s pretty telling that you failed to mention something so important. I feel kind of hurt, to be honest,” Tracy lied.

That got Riley’s attention. Riley did not like hurting people, however inadvertently. Her friend was such a pushover in that way. She turned to look at Tracy, her eyes wide.

“I didn’t mention it because it wasn’t the end of the world, Tracy. Women get elevations in blood pressure during pregnancy all the time. And as for the fluid levels . . .”

“So what if something happened to the baby?” Tracy demanded. She knew just how much pressure to exert and exactly where to exert it. And with Riley you had to be just short of brutal, remembering that she was a pretty strong-willed woman after all.

Riley put a protective hand on her stomach and rubbed it, her brows furrowing. “I don’t think it would hurt
the
. . .”

“So I guess the doctor just checks stuff like that for shits and giggles,” Tracy said taking another sip of coffee. “Fine. Take care of your little literary journal. I mean, after all, what could be more important than that?”

Tracy watched as Riley’s eyes filled with tears.
Hormones
, she thought, unaffected. Shawn noticed the tears as well and made a move toward his wife but Tracy shot him a look.
Did he want his pregnant wife to stop working or not?
If he did, he was going to have to man up and not let a few tears get to him.

“Nothing is more important than this baby, than my family,” Riley said, her voice trembling. “
Nothing
.”

“Hmm,” Tracy said coldly. She took her last gulp of coffee. “Really? Then if so, I suggest you start acting like it.” She put her coffee mug in the sink and then headed for the door.  “Call me later if you’re still talking to me.”

As she left, she caught a glimpse of Shawn’s face, on it just the shadow of a grateful smile and a hint of something he’d never had much of for her before:
respect
.

Fuck her.

The thing about women like Tracy was that they were all game. After months of complete silence, all of a sudden she was thinking about that night in L.A.? Right. More likely she took one look at Meghan and decided she needed to make sure no one was stepping in to take him off her stand-by list. Well, the hell with that.

Brendan slammed his car door then winced, regretting it immediately. He loved his car, his beautiful midnight blue, Aston Martin V12
Zagato
. It was reliable, did what he asked it to do, and didn’t change shit up from one moment to the next. Unlike women. Unlike Tracy. Because of her, he’d messed up a perfectly good evening with Meghan. Coming back from the brunch at Shawn and Riley’s he’d been too drunk to drive so she had to, which made her mad.

Meghan was not typical of the women he’d been with in the past. She didn’t tolerate that kind of ghetto shit; going out with a man who at the end of the night was in no shape to drive her home. So he had to spend the night at her place, which he may have done anyway, but the circumstances made her freeze him out of the bedroom.

“I
like
Riley and Shawn,” she’d said. “They’re your friends and I want them to like
me
. If you get too drunk to even drive me home, they get the message you don’t respect me. And if you don’t respect me, Brendan, why should they?”

She had a point there, he had to admit. But he’d spent most of the brunch trying to avoid Tracy, trying not to look at her. Trying not to get roped in all over again. Drinking seemed like his only recourse. And then to make matters worse, she had to go remind him of that time at the Grammys, which was practically an act of aggression as far as he was concerned.

Brendan laughed as he let himself into his apartment.
Right
. Like he’d been able to forget that night to begin with. But even more than the night itself—when he’d had what was easily one of the most memorable sexual experiences of his life—he remembered the morning after, when they met up with Shawn and Riley again for breakfast and Tracy had looked at him coolly across the table like he was a fucking stranger. And worse, later on when he’d cornered her alone to ask what was up, she’d tugged her hand from his and pushed gently on his chest to get some distance between them.

“Brendan,” she’d said. “C’mon. We know what that was. Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking it could be anything more.”

Kicked. His.
Ass
.

As a matter of fact he hadn’t known what it was. He thought it was the beginning of . . . something. He wasn’t sure what, but
something
. Instead she’d given him the Cold Tracy Stare and popped that bubble. And to add insult to injury, wanted to pick up where they left off like they should be phone buddies again; sidekicks to the main event that was the Shawn and Riley Show. Nah. That wasn’t happening. The difference between him and Tracy was that while she might be happy to live vicariously through her best friend, Brendan was not. I mean, to be as beautiful as she was, he had never once seen Tracy with a man.

Sure, he worked his ass off for Shawn and the label, but he had a life. A whole and full life that he intended to live. And for now, Meghan was a pretty damn good part of that life until Tracy had to show up in that figure-hugging long orange dress that had the perverse effect of reminding him that he knew perfectly well what was underneath it, telling him she was thinking about him.

Well fuck her. He’d been on that carnival ride, thank you very much. No way was he going back.

Still, as he lay on Meghan’s couch last night, sleeping off the six shots of Patr
ó
n, he’d been grateful that she kicked him out of bed. If he’d had sex with her last night there was no telling whose face he would see. And he didn’t want to do that to Meghan; she was good for him, and more than that, just fundamentally a good woman. Almost as good as Riley, even. And Tracy? She was many things, but she was not good.

Tracy was the kind of woman who wore her beauty like a sword, walking around just slaying motherfuckers. He’d seen her do it countless times; she would notice a man’s appreciation for her and meet his gaze, looking back at him with complete and utter contempt. How
dare
your dick get hard? How dare you think you could even look at a woman like
me
?